Lawrence Ball grew up surrounded by music of all kinds, perpetually, in the home. He is a largely self-taught composer and musician, who began playing melodies by ear at age 4.

Ball holds a Computer Science BSc Hons. degree from London University, 1972, when he also researched and created computer-generated music.

Notable collaborations include those with The Who’s guitarist and principal songwriter Pete Townshend on the Lifehouse-Method project, which resulted in over 10,000 generated music portraits over the internet. A related album, METHOD MUSIC, was released in 2012 on Navona Records.

Over the course of his career, Ball has covered a broad palette of media expressions, scored over 200 musical pieces, recorded a wide range of music including electronic, programmed computer software, and created a multitude of improvised piano recordings.

As a composer, Ball is interested in Innovation with deep meditative states in music, (including the invention of liquid rhythm) and ways of generating music (with graphics) using Harmonic Mathematics — a math of aesthetics — both with and without fractals.

Ball is currently in an ongoing collaboration with Mike Tusch (www.synthaesis.com), where they develop and perform audiovisual experiences and events which deeply integrate music and visual imagery, also incorporating Harmonic Mathematics.

Ball has worked with sarod player Lisa Sangita Moskow and Sri Lankan vocalist Manickam Yogeswaran on improvised music based on North and South Indian raga scales.

His musical output is usually self-initiated and presented in Planet Tree Music Festival alongside championed composers’ work (e.g. Kaikhosru Sorabji, Jean Catoire, Alan Hovhaness, Keith Barnard, James D’Angelo). The Navona Records 2016 album ENERGY DIAMOND showcases selected festival performances of his music.

Ball has performed in over 10 different countries including a concert on composer Ciurlionis’s piano in Vilnius, Lithuania. He will have composed eight symphonies and counting by 2023.

His compositions have been performed by a wide range of performers including:

Pianists: Carlo Grante, Nicolas Horvath, Giusto DiLallo, Mark Swartzentruber, Javier Negrin, Tim Ravenscroft, Alessandra Celletti, and (the late) Yonty Solomon.

String soloists: Robin Ireland (violist – Lindsay Quartet), violist Neil Davis, cellist Rosa Bugarin, and (the late) cellist Susan Rennie.

String Quartets: Smith Quartet and Solem Quartet. 

Vocalists: Rosemary Forbes-Butler and Sarah Leonard.

Small Ensembles: California Ear Unit (septet), various ad hoc quartets and septets, and Rosy Voices (female vocal quartet).

David Bowie organized the first public performance of Ball’s electronic/rock band Snowfish (Soft Machine with electronic music), featuring Charles Hayward and Adrian Segar in 1969 at the Beckenham arts lab.

“METHOD MUSIC by Lawrence Ball, released in 2012 on Navona Records, hailed by Pitchfork for its “wondrous, rippling, and startlingly tactile music.”

“And pieces by Ball… — including the delightful Waterfall, and Brightness demonstrated skills usually lacking in unreconstructed tonal composers, and imaginative and entertaining ways of elaborating simple materials.” — Keith Potter (author, American Minimal Music and reviewer) The Independent, U.K.

Albums

Arp City

Release Date: April 19, 2024
Catalog Number: NV6613
21st Century
Electronic
It doesn’t happen often that the talents of art and science unite in one person. Lawrence Ball, creator of experimental electronic music and accomplished tutor of mathematics, reconciles both disciplines on his new release, ARP CITY. The result is a truly timeless blend of synthesizers, layered soundscapes, and whimsical human creativity. While the acoustic topography of ARP CITY is undeniably cerebral, it is also captivating to the ear. The instruments employed evoke the groundbreaking era between the 1960s and 1980s, when even the highbrow figures of popular music didn't take themselves too seriously. Yet, there is an ethereal quality to Ball's work that seems to draw its force not from the past; rather, it seems to be a transcendental exploration of a mysterious future.

Energy Diamond

Release Date: September 9, 2016
Catalog Number: NV6058
21st Century
Chamber
Oboe
Piano
Composer Lawrence Ball has long been fascinated by the intersection of subjective human emotion and algorithmic mathematical objectivity.  In his 2012 Navona Records release METHOD MUSIC, produced by Pete Townshend of The Who and PARMA Recordings CEO Bob Lord, he took Townshend’s long-gestating concept of automatic musical portraiture first explored in LIFEHOUSE and WHO’S NEXT and turned it into reality, creating a system which could translate personal information and experiences into sound.

Fine Music, Vol. 3

Release Date: January 1, 2012
Catalog Number: NV5868
21st Century
Chamber
Orchestral
Electronic
Orchestra
Piano Trio
FINE MUSIC, VOL. III is the third compilation of the Navona Records Fine Music digital series. This installment features the works of Lawrence Siegel, Sergio Cervetti, Tony Piccolo, Adrienne Albert, Daniel Perttu, Gerhard Stabler, Jane O'Leary, Jim Scully, Meira Warshauer, Piffaro, John Carollo, William Vollinger, Peter Van Zandt Lane, Lawrence Ball, and Benjamin Yusupov. This collection both highlights some of Navona's choicest tracks and offers a preview of things to come.

Method Music

Release Date: January 1, 2012
Catalog Number: NV5860
21st Century
Orchestral
Electronic
Percussion
Meditative yet propulsive. Structured yet sprawling. Gossamer yet muscular. Inspired yet meticulously constructed. METHOD MUSIC by Lawrence Ball is all of these and more, a double album of highly adventurous electronic music by a master innovator of algorithmic composition.